Is adulthood in crisis? Why are so many people rejecting the traditional path of marriage, mortgage and a fast-track career? Are we facing an immaturity epidemic? In this provocative, humorous and persuasive book, Kate Crawford takes a close look at the conventional packaging of adulthood. The idealised picture of the wedding ring, picket fence and career-for-life no longer reflects how a growing number of Australians live. Commentators wring their hands over commitment-phobic, apolitical "adultescents" permanently plugged into iPods, and decry the loss of values. But they're missing the larger picture. The way we work, find homes, form families and engage in politics and culture has radically transformed. Crawford argues that it's time the debates on social values recognised the variety of ways that we choose to live. Equal parts media critique and manifesto, Adult Themes is an inspiring call to arms for those who know that being "adult" goes beyond home renovation, getting hitched and a gold watch on retirement. This book explodes the generational stereotypes and myths of perpetual adolescence to reveal the economic and cultural shifts that affect us all.

A new approach which problematizes the category of contemporary adulthood, this book includes chapters on demographic change; becoming thirty-something; graduates and work; mental health and happiness; new configurations of masculinity; the sexual lifecourse; political beliefs in adulthood; and adulthood and the housing market.

Adulthood is taken for granted. It connotes the end of childhood, the resolution to the “storm and stress” period of adolescence. This conception is strongly entrenched in the sociology of youth and the sociology of the life course as well as in the policy arena. At the same time, adulthood itself remains unarticulated; journey’s end remains conceptually fixed and theoretically uncontested. Adulthood, then, is both central to the social imagination and neglected as an area of sociological investigation, something that has been noted by sociologists over the last four decades. Going beyond the overwhelmingly psychological literature, this book draws on original qualitative research and theories of social recognition and thus presents a first step towards filling an important gap in our understanding of the meaning of adulthood.

Queer and Subjugated Knowledges: generating subversive Imaginaries makes an invaluable contribution to gender and sexuality studies, engaging with queer theory to reconceptualize everyday interactions. The scholars in this book respond to J. Halberstam's call to engage in alternative imaginings to reconceptualize forms of being, the production of knowledge, and envisage a world with different sites for justice and injustice. The recent work of cultural theorist, Judith Halberstam, makes new investments in the notion of the counter-hegemonic, the subversive and the alternative. For Halberstam.

Mobile Technologies charts the social, cultural, creative, and design aspects of mobiles as they are being incorporated into and changing the nature of media. It provides rigorous and timely analysis of the new area of mobile media and will be of interest to scholars, policy makers, industry, and general readers.

The concept of everyday struggles can enliven our understanding of the lives of young people and how social class is made and remade. This book invokes a Bourdieusian spirit to think about the ways young people are pushed and pulled by the normative demands directed at them from an early age, whilst they reflexively understand that allegedly available incentives for making the ‘right’ choices and working hard – financial and familial security, social status and job satisfaction – are a declining prospect. In Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles, the figures of those classed as 'hipsters' and 'bogans' are used to analyse how representation works to form a symbolic and moral economy that produces and polices fuzzy class boundaries. Further to this, the practices of young people around DIY cultures are analysed to illustrate struggles to create a satisfying and meaningful existence while negotiating between study, work and creative passions. By thinking through different modalities of struggles, which revolve around meaning making and identity, creativity and authenticity, Threadgold brings Bourdieu’s sociological practice together with theories of affect, emotion, morals and values to broaden our understanding of how young people make choices, adapt, strategise, succeed, fail and make do. Youth, Class and Everyday Struggles will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers, of fields including: Youth Studies, Class and Inequality, Work and Careers, Subcultures, Media and Creative Industries, Social Theory and Bourdieusian Theory.

A Companion to New Media Dynamics presents a state-of-the-art collection of multidisciplinary readings that examine the origins, evolution, and cultural underpinnings of the media of the digital age in terms of dynamic change Presents a state-of-the-art collection of original readings relating to new media in terms of dynamic change Features interdisciplinary contributions encompassing the sciences, social sciences, humanities and creative arts Addresses a wide range of issues from the ownership and regulation of new media to their form and cultural uses Provides readers with a glimpse of new media dynamics at three levels of scale: the 'macro' or system level; the 'meso' or institutional level; and 'micro' or agency level